Virtue and Happiness
The word happiness in the Ethics is
a translation of the Greek term eudaimonia, which
carries connotations of success and fulfillment. For Aristotle,
this happiness is our highest goal. However, Aristotle does not
say that we should aim at happiness, but rather
that we do aim at happiness. His goal in the Ethics is
not to tell us that we ought to live happy, successful lives, but
to tell us what this life consists of. Most people think of happiness
as physical pleasure or honor, but this is because they have an
imperfect view of the good life.
The conception people have of happiness frequently does
not line up with true happiness because people are generally deficient
in virtue. Virtue is a disposition to behave in the right manner,
which is inculcated from a young age. A person with the
virtue of courage, for instance, will not only show confidence in
the face of fear, but will think of this courage as a good thing.
Behaving courageously will make the virtuous person happy and will
be one part of living a generally good life. By contrast, a person
who has been poorly brought up and exhibits the vice of cowardice
will find happiness in the avoidance of danger and thus will have
an imperfect view of the good life.
Moral Education
A question of high importance in any investigation of
ethics is how we can teach people to be good. Aristotle is quite
clear that he does not think virtue can be taught in a classroom
or by means of argument. His Ethics, then,
is not designed to make people good, but rather to explain what
is good, why it is good, and how we might set about building societies
and institutions that might inculcate this goodness.
According to Aristotle, virtue is something learned through
constant practice that begins at a young age. We might understand
his outlook better if we recognize the meaning of the word arete, which is
rendered as “virtue” in most English translations. This term more generally
means “excellence,” so a good horseman can exhibit arete in
horsemanship without necessarily implying any sort of moral worth
in the horseman. It should be obvious to anyone that excellence
in horsemanship cannot be learned simply by reading about horsemanship
and hearing reasoned arguments for how best to handle a horse. Becoming
a good horseman requires steady practice: one learns to handle a
horse by spending a lot of time riding horses.
For Aristotle, there is no essential distinction between
the kind of excellence that marks a good horseman and the kind of
excellence that marks a good person generally. Both kinds of excellence
require practice first and theoretical study second, so the teaching
of virtue can be only of secondary importance after the actual practice
of it.
The Doctrine of the Mean
One of the most famous aspects of the Ethics is
Aristotle’s doctrine that virtue exists as a mean state between
the vicious extremes of excess and deficiency. For example, the
virtuous mean of courage stands between the vices of rashness and
cowardice, which represent excess and deficiency respectively.
For Aristotle, this is not a precise formulation. Saying
that courage is a mean between rashness and cowardice does not mean
that courage stands exactly in between these two extremes, nor does
it mean that courage is the same for all people. Aristotle repeatedly reminds
us in the Ethics that there are no general laws
or exact formulations in the practical sciences. Rather, we need
to approach matters case by case, informed by inculcated virtue
and a fair dose of practical wisdom.
Aristotle’s claim that virtue can be learned only through
constant practice implies that there are no set rules we can learn
and then obey. Instead, virtue consists of learning through experience
what is the mean path, relative to ourselves, between the vices
we may be liable to stumble into.
The Unity of the Virtues
For Aristotle, virtue is an all-or-nothing affair. We
cannot pick and choose our virtues: we cannot decide that we will
be courageous and temperate but choose not to be magnificent. Nor
can we call people properly virtuous if they fail to exhibit all
of the virtues.
Though Aristotle lists a number of virtues, he sees them
all as coming from the same source. A virtuous person is someone
who is naturally disposed to exhibit all the virtues, and a naturally
virtuous disposition exhibits all the virtues equally.
Our word ethics descends from the Greek
word ethos, which means more properly “character.”
Aristotle’s concern in the Ethics, then, is what
constitutes a good character. All the virtues spring from a unified
character, so no good person can exhibit some virtues without exhibiting
them all.
The Importance of Friendship
Aristotle devotes two of the ten books of the Ethics to
discussing friendship in all its forms. This is hardly a digression
from the main line of argument. Happiness, according to Aristotle,
is a public affair, not a private one, so with whom we share this
happiness is of great significance.
The city-states of ancient Greece were tightly knit communities. In
the Politics, Aristotle argues that we
cannot fully realize our human nature outside the bounds of a Greek
city-state. The bonds that tie citizens together are so important
that it would be unthinkable to suggest that true happiness can
be found in the life of a hermit.
The Life of Contemplation
In Book X, Aristotle ultimately concludes that contemplation
is the highest human activity. This is largely a consequence of
his teleological view of nature, according to which the telos, or
goal, of human life is the exercise of our rational powers. In discussing
the various intellectual virtues, Aristotle extols wisdom as the
highest, since it deals only with unchanging, universal truths and
rests on a synthesis of scientific investigation and the intuitive
understanding of the first principles of nature. The activity of
wisdom is contemplation, so contemplation must be the highest activity
of human life.
